


Light and Shadow

by Gement



Series: Batman: Millennials in Love [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne is Not Batman, Bruce Wayne/OMC (mention), Gen, Kinder than Canon, POV Outsider, Wild Speculation on Batman's Identity, according to this theory which honestly makes a lot more sense than the truth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:29:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23047042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gement/pseuds/Gement
Summary: Monique knows exactly who Batman is. Why can't anyone else see it?(Outtake fromNay, I Can't Resist Thee, but it's a dandy theory without context so I have brought it out for all to see. The individual scraps of evidence would vary from universe to universe, but the conclusion is just obvious.)
Relationships: Batman & Bruce Wayne
Series: Batman: Millennials in Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636105
Comments: 27
Kudos: 64





	Light and Shadow

Monique lay awake, staring at the fractured rhombus of streetlight on the ceiling. She idly touched the black panic button disguised as a smartwatch on her wrist. She did that a lot. The cool plastic under her fingertips meant not safety, but insurance. No one wants to call in a claim, but when it's needed, it's a million times better than not having it.

 _There's a history,_ Bruce had said. _We all start closer to home._

 _This makes you practically blood kin,_ Zach had said when Bruce gave her the panic button. Measured against whom? Bruce didn't have blood kin; he was famous for it. Unless he did.

The man who had laid waste to a heap of trouble in her living room, who had taken blows to the head and stood between guns and her family, who had silently checked over Dani's bruises, made bright blue eye contact with every single one of them, and crouched to exchange a nod with Elijah before disappearing out the window, moved like a dancer. Also like a kung fu action hero and a jack-booted thug, but his grace was what stuck in her mind, incongruous with his massive build.

That and his lantern jawline, which was famous in its own right. She suspected Bruce didn't realize exactly how distinctive that chin was, or that silent, effortless way of moving. Anyone whose powers of observation didn't switch off when they saw a rich white man had to realize they were as close as brothers.

She wondered what it must have been like, growing up in the shadow of the Waynes. She wondered how well Thomas Wayne's second family had been provided for. Damn well. Far easier to pay for a nice house and comfort for life than risk blackmail. She wondered if Bruce had known, while his father was still alive.

He might have. The whole pile of them, Thomas and his two wives and his two sons unwrapping presents in the sunlit living room where Bruce always liked to bring people. That would have been nice for them.

More than two sons? No, he'd have been careful after the first bastard, and the shadow son must have been younger, otherwise there would have been a scandal. But maybe not younger by much, given how entitled men behaved when their pregnant wives became unavailable.

Practically twins. And then twin orphans, united in loss, with grief and grim childish determination burning in their matching blue eyes. Had the shadow mom stayed in the picture? Was she still out there? Was she in Bruce's life as well? Alfred had been in on it from the beginning, even if Martha and Bruce Wayne hadn't; the help always knew. Otherwise they couldn't be helpful.

Alfred had watched over them as they hatched their naïve schemes for vengeance. They plotted and planned like writing rules for a treehouse, brothers only, keep out. They drew costumes and a car and an airplane, all shaped like bats, because one or both of them thought bats were cool.

They would have gotten over it eventually, in another world. In this one, they had billions of dollars to play with and it was the dawn of the millennium. Instead of learning the world didn't work that way, they saw that it _did_ , that gangs of people dressed like zombies and robots and shitty mimes were overrunning the city they'd been raised to believe they owned. So they trained, they studied, they specialized, and they came up with a strategy.

Bruce would have to be the pleasant, smiling face. He was too public to do the messy parts. The golden boy, laughing in the sun, playing with his toys, never growing up, good-hearted but useless at any problems that couldn't be solved with money. And his shadow, only seen at midnight, drenched in shit and vice and violence, cleaning up their city by force.

They must still train together. The brother was bigger, but Bruce was no slouch, and Batman would need a trainer who could keep up with him. They must still study together. Bruce could be the specialist there. His memory and random corners of knowledge were eerie. His careless exterior flaked away the second he lost focus, revealing a thoughtful, ethical workaholic.

He would have his own version of the costume, so he could fake it when they needed to be in two places at once. Maybe he was brazen enough to hire his own brother as a body double for security work. Maybe playing Batman when he didn't have quite enough muscle to back it up was how he'd nearly died in the bay, finally driving him to stop keeping Zach locked in the closet with his brother.

Maybe Zach thought he'd died and gone to heaven when he learned there were _two_ of them. Okay, she should really stop speculating about that.

She hoped they still spent time together for more than work. She hoped they piled into the living room, the two brothers and Zach and their nan Alfred, maybe the shadow mom, maybe another partner or three. She hoped they had not just kin, but family.

Gotham's favorite sons.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to find a less generic title, but mythology failed to yield a really striking brotherly dichotomous pair that suited Batman. (If you know of one, please holler in the comments!)
> 
> Update: Within two weeks of posting this, I'd written the porn Monique is refusing to speculate about here. And then I waited _five months_ to publish it, because I am a very silly person. It's here: [Gemini](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766259)
> 
> [← Chapter 43](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388384/chapters/55119190) | [NICRT](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388384) | [Chapter 44 →](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388384/chapters/55120924)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Gemini](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766259) by [Gement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gement/pseuds/Gement)




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